As the price of a stock increases rational investors usually take a pause to assess whether the run is over. Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) rise has defied this trend and as the stock continues its metor rise, the company is garnering the attention of both institutional and retail investors.

Apple is the most crowded trade on the planet right now. The company is the top owned stock by hedge funds, and has dozens of sell-side analysts watching every single announcement by the company and price move.

Retail investors cannot get enough of Apple. As usual, most people tend to equate a good company with a good stock, regardless of the price which they are paying for it. While this works sometimes, the vast majority of times, people pay for this type of attitude.

Apple does not seem so expensive. The stock is trading at approximately a price earnings ratio of 15. If you subtract the giant cash hoard (ignoring the fact that 66% is overseas to avoid taxes), the company’s price earnings multiple net of cash is closer to 11. Additionally, the new iPAD is already out of stock, Apple will have to keep production up at a rapid pace.

What is interesting to note is Morgan Stanley (MS) in particular, which announced this morning that the stock could go to $960 a share. Morgan Stanley sell-side analyst, Katy Huberty makes the case for this number using project using fair assumptions of earnings growth

I see your $720 and raise you a $960! (but not today, at least next year, which probably makes is conservative!)

WSJ - Morgan Stanley ratchets up its price target for Apple nearly 40% — to $720 from $515 — saying investors “still underestimate the potential earnings upside at Apple.” One of these potential upside drivers includes emerging market iPhone growth, which could happen if new carriers and existing carriers like China Mobile add more iPhones to their line-ups. The higher price target doesn’t include new product categories like a physical Apple TV or a lower-priced iPhone, but assumes no multiple expansion, which is likely to occur if the company issues a dividend.

But the number that’s really catching some attention is $960. That’s the price target that Apple analyst Katy Huberty slaps on America’s Biggest Company for the end of 2013.

last night i was watching bloomberg and they said apple cant call it the iTV because that name is already being used by a company......i think in Europe. dont know how true that is, that's what "they" said.

they were also talking about how apple used to be a company where people were buying ipods or iphones or macs and now they were looking for the trifector: i.e. one person has an ipad, iphone and hopefully an "iTV." watch tv on the iTV while tweeting on the iPad and if you have to make a phone call you use your iphone. meanwhile, all three devices are working together to keep you connected.

i think an apple television will sell....but im no expert. just thinking of the whole "apple mania" where people buy things simply because its the "in" thing.

does anyone have an opinon on what the stock will do when ipad sales are in full swing friday morning? can investors expect prices to jump friday morning?